Admission Groups and Academic Performance: A Study of Marginal Entrants in the Selection to Higher Education

Karlsson Linn () and Magnus Wikström
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Karlsson Linn: Department of Economics, Umeå School of Business, Economics and Statistics, Umeå university, Samhällsvetarhuset, Bibliotekgränd 6, A24407, 901 87, Umeå, Sweden

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2022, vol. 22, issue 1, 155-191

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to study whether Swedish admission policies successful in selecting the best-performing students. The Swedish universities select students based on two different instruments, which each form a separate admission group. A regression model is recommended to estimate the achievement differences for the marginally accepted students between the admission groups and is applied to a sample of 9024 Swedish university entrants in four different fields of education. Marginally accepted students in the group selected by school grades on average perform better than students accepted by an admission test, suggesting that a small reallocation of study positions towards the grade admission group may increase overall academic achievement. However, the achievement difference appears to vary concerning university programme selectivity. We found that increasing selection by grades in less competitive programmes would improve overall achievement, while we do not find any effect for highly competitive programmes.

Keywords: higher education; selection; admission groups; marginal admit; achievement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I23 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Working Paper: Admission groups and academic performance: A study of marginal entrants in the selection to higher education (2021)
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DOI: 10.1515/bejeap-2020-0434

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